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Friday, February 20, 2015

History of Arawn (Part 1)

The Arawn server has a rich history that has been crafted over many years by clans and players that have slipped into legend. In this post I will tell about the course of events that started at the beginning of the game, which led us to where we are in the present day. This is Part 1 of the history of Arawn...

Update 1: Catacombs (June 16, 2011 to October 12, 2011)

In version 1 on Arawn, everyone was crowded into the Catacombs. Where the rest of the server was largely deserted, you could find 20-25 people there at any given time. The reason for this was that although the best vendor armor was sold in the castle, non-class restricted plate armor would drop from Black Revenants in the Catacombs. This was the best armor as any class could equip it, and it had the highest armor rating in the game. The clan RedBranch was the top clan at this time, and would farm for it constantly, selling off the unrestricted plate armor for gold. During this time RedBranch clan mate, Wolf, left and created the clan Wolves. However, both clans cooperated and didn't compete, as there were friends in both clans.

On July 17, the update that released the Incarnation of Donn brought upgraded versions of the castle vendor armor. This update also introduced the Ice Magic ability for mages, that needed to be trained up from zero since many people were around level 40 when the patch was released. Another thing to note was that before this patch, energy boost was available to all classes. This patch took that away, but any character made previous to this patch retained the use of energy boost regardless of their class.

Around this time RedBranch dissolved because of the difficulty associated with leveling at top levels. The active members merged into clan Everfear along with Wolves. People would still cooperate on bosses no matter what clan they were in. When a person saw a boss, they would announce it to the zone to get help. Although groups were limited to four people, many would come to help and Everfear would distribute the drops based on attendance, depending on class and level. Everfear was the dominant clan and helped others, but they still competed against others such as the clan DragonRiders who counted Kooks and HassanJomaa among their members.

Another clan that was being shut out from bosses by Everfear was the clan NoobNation headed by Bandit. Bandit was a well known scammer who would use a variety of methods to take items from people. Some of his tactics were to trade noobs trash and ask for gold, gain a person's trust and ask to borrow items, and modifying the trade window shortly before people accepted the trade because of lag. In his time on Arawn during v1 and v2, he would create many different characters to scam items with. You needed to be careful who you were trading with, because you never knew who could be Bandit.

It is also worth mentioning that there was a bug that caused anyone in the area to lose the target they had on the player or mob they were targeting, when a mob cast a skill. This was a major annoyance to druids trying to heal the tank in a room full of people.

Another bug that affected the economy of the server at this time was that cloak of fire would kill all of the new Catacomb bosses almost instantly, allowing any mage to solo them for the best armor in the game. The spawn rate on these bosses was 10 minutes, so you could do a lap of the three rooms killing all placeholders, and repeat it over and over again.

Clan Everfear was short lived. As the number of people in the world increased, Wolf started selling drops to low level players, instead of distributing them based on attendance as was done previously. Another concern was that Everfear members wanted to be geared up, but were unwilling to work for their gear. This led Tsubame to convince Raven to leave Everfear and create the clan Juppongatana. One of the goals was to recruit high level players to do end game Catacomb bosses, an to gear up clan members first before gearing up other players.This had the effect of curtailing Wolf selling drops for personal gain. Juppongatana was formed on August 11, 2011 primarily by members that left clan Everfear, using a points system to distribute gear. They quickly became the dominant clan on Arawn due to being more organized and clan oriented. The best tank at this time was Bronn.

During this time, Raven and Bronn made secret alt characters to see how people in the clan would treat noob players. Bronn made Bubbles, because he thought that with a silly name people would think he was young and inexperienced. Raven created xSarahx and would ask silly questions that only an inexperienced player would ask. They found that most people were very helpful, and treated them well. The exception to this was when Bandit sold xSarahx a ruby for an exorbitant amount over shout. Bronn and Raven told the clan about the experiment, and learned that the ruse had fooled everyone.

A few players, including Raven were able to level up past 60 using the rare Firesword mobs that spawned in the Catacombs. However, due to Raven having real life commitments, and expanded recruitment the clan had some internal strife. A major blow happened when the clan found out that the chief had been deceiving them about his age and gender. Raven took a less active role in the clan and passed leadership over to Xellaya.

Juppongatana's philosophy was that they would try to help everyone that was a good player and showed dedication to the game, regardless of whether they were in the clan or not. They believed in building friendships and interclan groups.

In early October 2011, Bandit was able to use his jailbroken iPhone to give himself 500 million gold. He may not have been found out until gold was included on the leaderboards, except that he gave it away to everyone online at the time using one of his alts named GoldenArrow. Many people took the gold, and didn't consider that it might be hacked. On October 7th, because of this, Bandit got banned. However, everyone that he had given gold to, and had over 5 million gold, were also banned as well. Raven, Wolf, Xellaya, Tomo, sandlander, and JcBeast were among those banned.

When the Admin relented, he returned the accounts to most people minus the gold that was hacked. Raven was one of the first to be restored, but he was stripped of all gold and luxury items. Later, Raven was credited some gold to help pay for the lost luxury items. During this time, Bronn took a break and gave his character to Wolf because Wolf was banned.

Some people, including Xellaya and Kooks, were able to hang onto their gold because they had spent it quickly and had transferred it off to other characters. Because of this gold hack, the economy of Arawn was ruined for quite some time. It also caused the prices of the upcoming Halloween event on October 28th to be increased massively to take the hacked gold out of circulation.

Juppongatana means "The Ten Swords", and they had 10 generals running the clan. The name came from the Kenshin anime series.

Although there were many clans, it was not uncommon for one person to have alt characters in other clans.

One clan evolved over a short period of time. Wolves became Legion, which became Sparta.

In Update 1, Raven was the highest level character at level 60. This was quite an accomplishment because back then the highest level mob was the level 50 Fireswords. Bronn hit level 60 second, then Kooks.

Because of the gold hack, the Broom of Doom cost 1 million gold, and the only people who could afford it were people who got money from the gold hack.

Before update 1, there was a bug that allowed rogues to use a warrior hammer. It let them hit for 1000 hp and instantly kill a Black Revenant.

Xell is a talented artist that created many cartoons of Celtic Heroes characters. One of them can be seen at the top of this blog post. Click here to see her art

Another good clan during v1 was kingOwing, headed by SirWinston. This clan merged with Juppongatana to create Serenity in update 2.

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Author Details

Hi, my name is Goodies and I'm a druid on the Arawn server. These days I mostly play on Rosmerta as a clan member in Forever.
I have been playing Celtic Heroes since October 2011, and I am currently a forum moderator. You can message me on the forums at Bitey.